CLASSIFICATION OF THE STUDENTS.

129

At Yale College the undergraduates during the course of four years are termed, as at Harvard and the other American Colleges, successively Freshmen, Sophomores, Junior, and Senior, Sophisters. It is customary for those graduates who wish to prosecute their studies more fully, to avail themselves of the lectures for several additional years; while they do so they are subject, in common

"The

Kinsale, Ireland, on the morning of the 22d April 1822. extinction," as a biographer has said, "of genius, of virtue, and of bright hopes!"

Mr. Fisher was born at Franklin, Massachusetts, in 1794. In 1809 at the age of 15 he entered Yale College, where in 1813 he received a Bachelor's degree and finished the course with the highest reputation. After spending some time at the Theological Academy at Andover, he returned to Yale College in 1815, in consequence of being appointed Tutor; in 1817 he was nominated Adjunct Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and in 1819 sole Professor of the same branches. The vigour of his mind, the extent of his acquirements, and his unwearied industry, enabled him to discharge his professional duties with a success, which excited the most lively satisfaction in his brother Professors; which bade fair to raise the reputation of the College, as a school for the exact sciences, to a higher rank than any American seminary has yet attained, and which would doubtless have drawn forth the homage of admiration from the older institutions of Europe.

The

To me as an individual the destruction of the Albion, and the death of Professor Fisher, were both events of most painful interest. Albion was the vessel in which I returned to my native country; she was then newly launched, and Captain Williams who was lost in her, had been promoted from an older of the packet vessels to her command. We embarked on the tenth of March, and by noon on the thirtieth we were walking the streets of Liverpool. With Mr. Fisher I had become acquainted at New Haven, and had been particularly gratified by his society and conversation. Calling at his

with the others, to the more essential rules of College discipline.

For admission to the Freshman class, it is requisite that the candidate should have completed his fourteenth year, and he must undergo examination upon Adam's Latin Grammar, Clarke's Intro

apartments in the college, one morning after breakfast, I found him with a duodecimo bible upon the table before him; he had shut it as I entered, and its leaves betokened that it was the subject of frequent study. He enquired particularly about the state of religion in Glasgow, about our benevolent institutions, our Bible, and Missionary Societies; about our clergymen, the support which they gave to such institutions, the style of their preaching, and their theological reputation. He conducted me through several of the apartments of the college; the library, the cabinet of minerals, and the room containing the philosophical apparatus, Long will I cherish the remembrance of that interview and conversation. Early in 1822 I was apprized of his intention of visiting this country, and informed that he would probably be in Glasgow about the month of May. I hoped to have had the pleasure of seeing him for a time the inmate of my own family, and fondly anticipated the intellectual feast which his conversation would afford. But alas! ere May arrived, the Albion was a wreck, and poor Fisher a corpse engulphed in the ocean! "Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it; and God doeth it that men should fear before him."

Some of the fruits of Mr. Fisher's early talents have been preserved in periodical Journals. He contributed under the signature of Nov. Anglus' Solutions of various questions in the 5th volume of the Mathematical Repository, edited by Thomas Leybourn, of the Royal Military Academy.' He is author under the signature of 'X' of various Solutions of mathematical questions in the American Monthly Magazine, begun at New York in 1817; one of these is said to be particularly deserving of notice, On the most advantageous position of the sail of a wind mill, when the ratio of the velocities of the sail and wind is given. In the 4th Volume of the Memoirs of the Ameri

TERMS OF ADMISSION.

131

duction to the making of Latin, Goodrich's Greek Grammar, and Prosody, Cicero's Select Orations, Virgil, Sallust, Dalzel's Analecta Græca Minora, and the Greek Testament. Applicants for the more advanced classes must have a corresponding increase of age, and undergo examination upon

can Academy of arts and sciences,' are published his Observations on the Comet of 1819, and calculation of its orbit; this paper was the result of the first actual observations on a heavenly body that he had ever made. To Professor Silliman's Journal of Science,' he furnished the following papers:-In Vol. I. Essay on Musical Temperament, written when he was about twenty-one years of age, and which called forth from Mr. John Farey, Senior, London, in an essay on Musical Intervals, in Vol. 2d of the same journal, the following observation; "I have before met with nothing like it, in point of utility, in an attentive perusal of nearly every thing which has been printed in the English language on the subject"-In Vol. III. Remarks on Dr. Enfield's Institutes of Natural Philosophy; a paper exhi- › biting his extensive and familiar acquaintance with mathematical and philosophical writers. On some recent improvements in the construction of the Printing Press, with a mathematical investigation of its theory and powers. In Vol. V. On Maxima and Minima of Functions of two variable quantities; written in part soon after he graduated.

His brother Professor Mr. Kingsley, in a biographical sketch, which has furnished me with some of the above particulars, says that Mr. Fisher's visit to Europe was undertaken "not so much for the sake of making new acquisitions in science for the knowledge of European philosophers is found in their books-as to visit the places of public instruction, and examine by actual inspection the mode of communicating knowledge in the foreign universities; to form an acquaintance with men who were distinguished in his own department, and to obtain such information as might enable him more fully to aid, in raising the scientific character of his country, and in promoting the usefulness and prosperity of this college." Professor Silliman in his Obituary adds-" Mr. Fisher was the most extraor

all the previous customary course of study. Each individual, on entering, is required to produce certificates of good moral character, and to subscribe a solemn engagement to be obedient in every respect to the laws of the College. The total number of Academical students and resident graduates is at present 283.6

The three younger classes are each divided

dinary man of his years whom I have ever known.-To his wonderful scientific attainments, he added the finish of classical and polite literature, derived from the best ancient as well as modern sources; his elegant taste embraced the fine arts in their extent and variety, and he was satisfied with nothing, even in the decorum and accommodations of private life, which was not adapted to the same elevated standard." His Parents still survive at the place of his nativity. One also lives with whom, had he been spared to return, he was soon to have entered upon the most endearing of earthly relations!

"There is a tear for all that die,

A mourner o'er the humblest grave—”

But how wide is the circle of mourners, when they are laid low, who were opening on a career of early and extensive usefulness, who seemed singularly marked out and qualified to enlarge the boundaries of science, and to exalt the intellectual character of a rapidly rising nation!

The Mathematical chair is now filled by the Rev. Matthew R. Dutton.]

6 At the date of this letter, Yale College was in number of students somewhat under Harvard; since that period however, it has got above the other by about twenty or thirty. In November 1820 its catalogue exhibited the following summary :—

COURSE OF STUDY.

133

into two parts, to each of which a Tutor is appointed, who assists the Professors in instructing and examining the students; the students of the fourth year, are under the more immediate superintendence of the President and Professors. The three younger classes attend three public recitations or lectures a day, excepting on Wednesday and Saturday, when they have only two. The senior class recites once a day to the President. At every lecture the students are minutely examined on the subject of the preceding one.

The annual Commencement' is on the second Wednesday of September, and there are in the year three terms, at the close of each of which is a short vacation.

The following is an abstract of the Academical

course:

FRESHMEN. First Term-Livy begun, Adam's Roman Antiquities, Webber's Arithmetic, Murray's English Grammar. Second Term-Livy's first five books finished, Analecta Græca Majora, the historical parts, Day's Algebra. Third Term—. Analecta Græca Majora continued, Morse's Geography, vol. 1st, Irving on Composition, Murray's Grammar reviewed.

In addition to these recitations, the Freshmen attend the lectures of the Professor of Languages, and the private exercises and lectures of the Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. They present